Look up ‘Mitochondrial Eve’ and ‘Y-chromosome Adam’.
The mitochondria are cellular structures passed down through the female line of descent. They are present in the egg, but not in the sperm, so all your mitochondria are inherited from your mother. If you track back far enough, by comparing mitochondria from all over the world, they go back to one common female ancestor, far in the past. Science dubbed this woman ‘Mitochondrial Eve’, and has since been at great pains to point out that they don’t believe it was the actual Eve. An unfortunate choice of term, in that case.
The Y chromosome is only found in males. Tracking that chromosome gives the male line of descent, to an individual dubbed by science as ‘Y-chromosome Adam’.
The thing is, Y-chromosome Adam lived thousands of years later than Mitochondrial Eve. So science nods its sombre head and states that this proves the Bible is wrong.
It does not. In fact, the evidence provided by these findings suggests exactly the opposite conclusion.
The Bible describes the flood at the time of Noah, and states that the human survivors were Noah and his wife, and Noah’s three sons and their wives.
The women were all unrelated. Their mitochondria were of different lines, diverged from the original source. Tracking back the mitochondria would pass through these four women and back to an earlier single source.
The men were Noah and his sons. The three sons all received their Y chromosome from Noah. All other Y-lines were eradicated in the Flood. So Adam is no longer the point-source for the Y chromosome. It’s Noah, who incidentally lived a long, long time later than Eve.
Now this, again, does not have me rushing to church to beg forgiveness for my sins. It does not prove that everything in the Bible is literally true. It does, however, correspond remarkably accurately with the finding that the origin of the male line of descent occurs much later than the origin of the female line of descent.
The story of Noah may or may not be literally true, but something happened to wipe out the male population of the human race to a greater extent than the female population. That is clear from the point-source of 'Y-chromosome Adam', perhaps better renamed as Noah. The story of the Flood might be a recounting of such a catastrophe. It might be literal, it might be a story told in metaphor. I don’t know.
I do know that I do not simply dismiss the information contained in the Bible. There is too much scientific evidence pointing to the accuracy of that information.
Ignoring correspondences between modern scientific findings and ancient written records is not the mark of the scientist. It is the mark of the fundamentalist.
On the other hand, twisting scientific findings to force them to fit a 6000-year-old-Earth theory is not helping the case for religion. It just invites ridicule.
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A footnote, to head off the red-faced flamers:
Mitochondrial Eve might represent the first evolutionary divergence of our species from an ancestral anthropoid line. What I've written above isn't proof of any creation theory.
The idea, generally put forward as the scientific rebuttal of the Bible, that there were many female lines and only one survived to populate the planet is based on as much 'faith' as any religious interpretation. There is no more evidence for that than there is for the idea that Eve was the only female member of a crashed spaceship (Oh, believe me, that idea is out there).
Science and religion spend a lot of time and effort trying to put each other down. Human progress would be greatly enhanced if they just accepted that they believe different things, and got on with it.
I doubt that will happen, though.
Hey, Romulus. Sorry to change the subject on you, but I need to get together with you privately if you're interested in doing an interview for an e-zine. You know my address, right?
I'll send an Email.
Sooooooo Rom, did she interview you? What about? How'd it go? Will it be published? Where can we read it?
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